On a quest to make a web series packed with jokes, romance and mops. - View our pilot at youtube.com/ultracleantv

Thursday, November 8, 2012

A Writing Meeting

We had a writing meeting last night. Normally a writing meeting for a comedy show means sitting in a sweaty room with a bunch of men, drinking in the odours of jam doughnuts and feet. But ours was a much more civilised affair.

Joining me, the head writer, were actor James Chapman, series director John Wood and friend of the series Sally Davies. See? We're already better than most comedy shows because we have a woman writing with us. We'll probably be pulling in some more writers as the series progresses, but our little group of four was perfect for a start.

L to R: James Chapman, Tristram Baumber, Sally Davies (John Wood taking the picture with his hands)

Together, we started tossing episode ideas around, as well as little scraps of ideas that couldn't possibly make a whole episode but were nonetheless trapped in our brains and had to see the light of day otherwise our heads would explode. Ideas of that type were mainly mine.

We're planning on writing 12 episodes, so now is the time to lay out the plans for what each of those episodes will be. Lots of ideas were suggested, although sadly no episodes about robots. I like TV shows about robots. As well as individual stories, we were also planning out some long-term story arcs. These are the stories that take place over whole seasons, or even complete runs of a show. For example, on a TV show about robots, the writers would plan out everything that was going to happen to the robots as the show progressed, episode by episode. Or on Lost, the writers wouldn't plan anything, they'd just pretend to.

On our show there are several stories that are going to continue episode to episode. It's our way of making the show a bit "soapy" and getting people to tune in each week. I'll talk about this more in our next blog but right now a giant robot that claims to be my secret brother-in-law is taking me and my whole family to court, risking our fortune, and I have to open this envelope containing my important medical test results.

(See what I did there?)

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